With the advent of mobile devices, digital video recorders and online TV streaming services like Netflix, television and how it is watched has drastically evolved since the days when families gathered together around the TV to share the same entertainment and experience.

Our clients are telling us that they want to be more efficient with paid media, ensuring that they reach the right customers with their brand messages in order to drive product sales. In television, still the largest media channel for most consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers, historically media has been purchased by demographics such as gender, age and family composition.

Whether advertising budgets are large or small, all CPG marketers (and their agencies) want to be more efficient, improve targeting and maximize reach to the people they want to influence. Digital advertising, with its many targeting techniques, has made it easier for marketers to reach specific consumers while television advertising has long been much more challenging. But, exciting new tracking and measurement tools can help marketers tie TV viewing to actual purchase data.

When I talk to people about the future of television, I always use digital as an example. When you surf the web, you see different ads than someone else who is visiting the same website. TV is based on a completely different advertising model, with all viewers seeing the same commercials during a TV program. While people in New York City see different local TV ads than those in Atlanta or Akron, everyone in the same market sees the same commercial at the same time.

Have you wondered whether TV advertising is still worthwhile in this world where households have so many options and so many distractions? As a consumer, I love my DVR, but as a researcher, it is another complication in an already fragmented and complex marketing environment. The key complication is it allows consumers to fast-forward through the commercials that advertisers are counting on them viewing. As DVRs continue to hold a key place in our TV viewing habits, this continues to be a concern for marketers. And while TV has morphed in other ways, with so many “on demand” options on every platform from gaming systems to cell phones, most consumers still watch the majority of their television viewing in the traditional format.